Questions of Freedom, Set in Black and White

Brits Off Broadway: The Unconquered

Off Broadway, Drama, Fair/Festival

Closing Date: May 18, 2008

59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St.

212-279-4200

By Andrea Stevens

May 10, 2008

In his furious satire “The Unconquered,” the British playwright Torben Betts shakes the daylights out of the smarmy idea of freedom, commonly given lip service today in far-flung spots like Iraq, Britain and the United States. Rather like an angry dog with a series of rats in its jaws, Mr. Betts sets himself the task of killing off popular beliefs in the benevolence of Big Brother government, religion, marriage and, of course, capitalism and bourgeois consumerism.

It’s a mouthful for the 90-minute work, part of the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, where “The Unconquered” opened on Wednesday. The nonstop ferocity and predictable tragic ending diminish the play’s emotional power, as does the self-conscious repetition of certain lines. But Mr. Betts is immensely helped by a game cast that delivers his words at Acela-like speed while retaining the humor. Well directed by Muriel Romanes in this production by the Stellar Quines Theater Company of Edinburgh, the actors maneuver around a tiny, claustrophobic set that resembles a comic-book panel.

Mr. Betts has set his allegorical tale  based on a 1940s Somerset Maugham story of the same name about a Frenchwoman raped by a German soldier  in a suburban home during a people’s revolution in a country that could be Britain. The title character is the rebellious Girl (Nicola Harrison), who rails against society’s rules and the empty existence of her unhappy, middle-class parents (the superb Alexandra Mathie as the self-denying Mother, and Neil McKinven as the household tyrant Father). The arrival of the violent Soldier (Neal Barry), carrying a large cardboard machine gun, in keeping with the witty set, changes all four lives.

As if to further distance the audience, the actors are in whiteface and black-and-white costumes that match the set, most of which has been drawn, black on white, down to the teapot and chandelier. (Keith McIntyre, the designer, has an exhibition of work in the theater’s foyer that could almost have been executed by a mad John Tenniel, the illustrator of “Alice in Wonderland.”)

Once the revolution has been put down, the Soldier gloats: “We must now build the peace. A world united under one ideal. The ideal of free trade” and “the heaping-up of capital.” The overtones of Brecht are audible.

In an interview with the Scottish magazine The List Mr. Betts is quoted as saying that the “free world,” meaning Britain and the United States, “will not tolerate a government with an unconventional philosophy.” Referring to “The Unconquered,” he said the play is “about this idea of the Americans and British in Iraq doing it all for benign reasons, all for the good of the people.”

Sitting in the theater, there is an impulse to say, “We get it, we get it.” But that doesn’t mean the message isn’t worthwhile.